Paules had this post about Russia’s demographic death spiral and I recently read an article stating that college-educated American women have a fertility rate of only 1.6, which is little better than China’s 1.54 with its one-child policy. Note comments 12 and 13 in Paules thread, and that a birth rate of 2.11 per woman is necessary to avoid a societal contraction and collapse.

Which then segues into a general fear of lifetime commitment. I can imagine a woman thinking to herself, “I suppose I could handle raising one child alone (which I will most assuredly be soon), but three?”

This made me laugh out loud because it’s EXACTLY what I was going to say. TeamAmerica, they haven’t actually achieved pain-free childbirth. If you think about what has to take place you can understand.

Seriously of course it’s not the pain but the responsibility and financial sacrifice and risk that gives women pause. Same thing that gives men pause, I guess, except generally more so.

EJHill: It’s selfishness. They’ve been brainwashed into thinking children are a patriarchal plot to deny them fulfillment.

Sorry, this is far too simplistic.

One word– inflation.

See: cost of real estate, pre-school, private k-12 education and the big kahuna- undergraduate and advanced degrees. Unless you’re willing to homeschool- and there are several members of my family who have done so successfully- I don’t see how a husband and wife living on a middle to upper middle class income could even contemplate having more than 1.5 kids!

teamAmerica—you got me giggling with your response about epidurals. Such a guy response, and cute. It’s not just delivery. We do carry that baby for nine months. Nausea, back cramps, headaches, swelling, hemorrhoids in places you can’t imagine hemorrhoids being, painful breasts…shall I go on. And then there’s the hormones and what happens to your body afterward….sigh. Delivery is the least of it. Granted, some pregnancies are better than others. I’ve known women who can carry and pop out those babies without blinking, but you asked my opinion, and when it comes to birthing children, there is a huge physical factor. Not to mention as we get older, it gets harder (typically). Just sayin

At least one reason: reproduction as a positive good has fallen out of favor. Barrenness has become a value.

This is one of the reasons why those of us who oppose same-sex “marriage” have experienced such frustration in pleading our case.

For a variety of reasons, perpetuating the life stream no longer seems like an urgent and obvious good, which is the way it seemed to all or almost all past generations.

Making and raising children is expensive and inconvenient in all kinds of ways. Therefore, when it no longer appears to be an especially compelling good (it used to be regarded by most people as the single most compelling earthly good), we’re going to have less of it.

In other words, one major reason people had large families in the past was so that the parents would have enough kids to take care of them when they were elderly. Welfare states create the illusion that children aren’t needed for that role, as the state will provide for the elderly. Illusion, because the state has no money and needs an adequately large supply of young workers to pay the taxes for Social Security and Medicare.

So somehow it must be communicated to both men and especially to women that low ,(i.e.< than 2.11) birth rates will lead to societal collapse, as is happening in Japan, Russia, and many other countries.

Paul Erlich’s 1968 best-selling book, ‘The Population Bomb,’ created the enduring myth that the Earth’s population is too large and growing exponentially. Many people, especially leftys and environmentalists, still parrot that nonsense.

Denise McAllister: teamAmerica—you got me giggling with your response about epidurals. Such a guy response, and cute. It’s not just delivery. We do carry that baby for nine months. Nausea, back cramps, headaches, swelling, hemorrhoids in places you can’t imagine hemorrhoids being, painful breasts…shall I go on. And then there’s the hormones and what happens to your body afterward….sigh. Delivery is the least of it. Granted, some pregnancies are better than others. I’ve known women who can carry and pop out those babies without blinking, but you asked my opinion, and when it comes to birthing children, there is a huge physical factor. Not to mention as we get older, it gets harder (typically). Just sayin · 31 minutes ago